INFLATION · NOWCAST
Cleveland Fed daily nowcast · official actuals via FRED

US inflation, nowcast vs. the official print

The four inflation measures the Fed and markets watch — CPI, Core CPI, PCE, Core PCE — as released (history from FRED), with the Cleveland Fed's daily real-time nowcast of where the next print lands. Charts are interactive: scroll to zoom, drag the slider to stretch, drag to pan, hover for the cross-hair.

4 measures2013–2026 historynowcast as of 2026-06-23daily updated
01 — The live nowcast

Where the next prints are landing

Cleveland Fed nowcast as of 2026-06-23. A blank cell means that month's official number is already out. Year-over-year is the headline; the Fed targets PCE, not CPI.

Year-over-year % (nowcast)

Jun 2026CPICore CPIPCECore PCE
Jun 20264.012.853.823.30

Month-over-month % (nowcast)

Jun 2026CPICore CPIPCECore PCE
Jun 20260.020.230.140.27

Quarterly annualized % (nowcast)

2026:Q2CPICore CPIPCECore PCE
2026:Q26.713.235.213.31
Read of the moment

Headline CPI is running ~4% YoY (elevated), and the nowcast has June easing slightly to 4.01%. Core CPI nowcast 2.85%; Core PCE — the Fed's preferred gauge — 3.30%, still above the 2% target.

02 — The chart

YoY inflation, 2013 → now, with the nowcast tip

Solid lines are the official YoY prints (FRED). The dashed segment + dot at the right edge is the Cleveland Fed nowcast for the not-yet-released month — the leading estimate.

scroll / pinch = zoom · drag the bottom slider handles = stretch the window · drag inside = pan · hover = cross-hair with value labels · click legend = toggle a series
Why it's useful

The nowcast updates every business day from ~18M price points, and historically leads the official CPI turning points by ~40–75 days and lands within ~±0.1pp of the release. It's a real-time read on a number that otherwise arrives monthly with a lag.

03 — Daily path

How this month's nowcast firmed up

The same nowcast, day by day through the current month — watch it converge as new data (rents, gas, etc.) arrives.

each point is a business-day update of the YoY nowcast for the current target month
04 — How to read it & caveats

What this is, and what it isn't

▲ Strengths
  • Daily, real-time — anticipates the monthly CPI/PCE print by weeks.
  • Covers PCE & Core PCE, the series the Fed actually targets.
  • Free & credible (Cleveland Fed); now on the Bloomberg Terminal.
▼ Caveats
  • It's a nowcast (estimate of the present), not a multi-month forecast.
  • Not on FRED and the site blocks plain fetching — the nowcast here was captured from the rendered page; automated daily capture needs a headless-browser scrape.
  • Use it to anticipate the print; for Fed direction the 2Y−FedFunds spread is the cleaner signal.
The one thing

This is the closest thing to a live ticker for CPI/PCE. The official numbers (solid lines) are the truth; the nowcast (dashed tip) is the best real-time guess of the next one — right now pointing to inflation still near 4% headline / ~3% core, i.e. above target.